The Malice of Unnatural Death

Chapter Seventeen

Thursday Next after the Feast of St Edmund⁶

Exeter City

In the cool of the early morning, Robinet woke with a tongue that appeared to have been expertly employed in cleaning the streetovernight. It was thick, foul-tasting, and rough, which seemed to match perfectly his feeling of general nausea, as thoughhe had been drinking too much for several days.

He opened his eyes with some reluctance, wondering what he might find. If the previous day was anything to go by, he couldexpect to be in a strange room, with no sign of his friend, and perhaps a knife fouled with another man’s blood.

Fortunately, there was nothing of the sort when he peered about him. Instead he saw his old companion at the fire, a cauldronalready warming, filled with a fresh porridge that scented the room with the delicious aroma of oats and barley.

‘You slept well. It’s past dawn now,’ Walter said, stirring the pot. ‘Thought I was going to have to kick you or eat it all myself.’

Robinet grinned as he drew the blanket away. Sweet Christ, but it was cold enough to shrivel his cods to the size of hazelnuts! He pulled on his shirt and tunic in a hurry to cover his nakedness, and took time to pull on his old hosen.

In the past, he would have proudly clad himself in the blue and striped particoloured uniform of one of King Edward II’s messengers. Those had been glorious days. He had lived with the king’s household, eating and drinking at the king’s expense, all againstthe day when he might be sent post-haste across the country with messages held in his little pouch, bound by his oath to deliverthe king’s letters until he was released or death took him.

If a messenger was ill, the king would send his own physician to help them. King Edward was always a compassionate, friendlyman. He enjoyed the company of his men, and they loved him for that. So what if barons said he oughtn’t to hedge and ditchwith the churls on his estates, or act, or sing? He was the king, in God’s name!

‘Any nearer an idea what happened the night before last?’ Walter demanded.

‘I swear, all I know is, we were in a tavern for the night, and then I woke in a stable. Someone had looked after me wellenough. I had a comfortable straw bed, and apart from a headache, I was perfectly well.’

‘Headache from the wine?’ Walter asked.

‘I don’t know. It still hurts now, but that’ll be your ale last night.’

Walter set the spoon down and walked over to him, studying him with his head on one side. ‘Where does it hurt?’

‘All over the back of my head — but it’s not a bruise. It just hurts as if I had too much to drink.’

Walter ran his hands over Robinet’s skull, ignoring his protestations, but as his fingers ran over the area above and behindthe left ear Newt had to wince and draw in his breath quickly. ‘That hurts!’

‘I’m not surprised. There’s a lump like a duck’s egg there. No, old friend. You’ve been knocked down. Perhaps it was the winethat saved your life. You fell so quickly, you were no threat to anyone else.’

‘But that’s mad! Who would knock me down?’

‘Someone who wanted to kill James? If they were happy to kill him, perhaps they knocked you down first?’

‘That would be stupid. Would you have done that?’

‘No. I’d have killed you too, just in case,’ Walter said, and his eyes had that quality again which Newt had seen before whenthey discussed murder: a quality of emptiness. ‘Better always not to leave witnesses behind. They can be messy.’

‘There is more to it than expediency, old fellow; if they were content to strike me down, they would have left me where theyhad hit me: in the street. Who would have carried me into a stable and left me there, nice and comfortable? Certainly notthis assailant who murdered James.’

‘True enough.’

‘No, I think it must be more simple,’ Newt asserted with a frown. His head was painful still. ‘Perhaps I was merely horriblydrunk, and rather than carry me home James saw a stable and installed me comfortably there.’

‘Perhaps — although what were you both doing out in the open at that time of night anyway? Weren’t you drinking in the tavernwhere he stayed?’

‘Yes. In the Noblesyn.’ Newt frowned.

‘But he was down at the South Gate, and you were near the Palace Gate yourself when you came to, weren’t you? What were you bothdoing down there?’

A flash of memory came back to Robinet. ‘There was a man at the inn who made James anxious. He said something …’

If only he could remember. The whole of the evening had been a blur, but now he knew his head had been struck, at least therewas an explanation for that. And perhaps if he could concentrate, he might remember something. ‘There was a man in there. That was it. And when he left the inn, James wanted to follow him. I went too.’

‘What then?’

He was frowning now with the effort. ‘I thought he was mad. I wanted to get away, anyway. Meant to come back here. So I leftwith him …’

In his mind’s eye he was there again. He could see the streets, wet with the thin sleet falling, smell the woodsmoke froma hundred fires, but the whole was tilting as he stared. The wine he’d been drinking was strong, and there had been plentyof it, and now he felt sickly as he stumbled over the cobbles.

At his side, James, who seemed more competent on his legs. Watching all about them as though fearing an attack — althoughperhaps it was only the natural caution of a man who feared that the watch might see them and try to arrest them for beingout after curfew.

‘He was carrying a message from the bishop. It was a reply to a message from the king, I think. He’d have left that nightif he’d had a chance, but the bishop was so slow in composing his note that he only received the message as dark was falling. Too late to do anything then. He had been going to ride off at first light. And then, I think, I was hit on the head. I seem to remember it now, a blow, and then Iwas falling.’

‘To get here from the Noblesyn you’d have gone along the High Street, and then carried on westwards,’ Walter pointed out.‘You woke up nearer the South Gate, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Perhaps I’d got lost … or James led me the wrong way?’

‘Perhaps he did, at that. Where was he when you fell?’

‘At my side, I think.’

‘I think that explains a lot,’ Walter said. He picked up his wooden spoon and began stirring again. ‘He knocked you down whenyou were near a place he knew would be safe for you.’

‘Him? Why’d he do a thing like that?’

‘Perhaps James didn’t trust you entirely, and sought to protect himself. Or …’ Walter paused, chewing at his inner lip.

‘What?’

‘I was just thinking — if he thought he was going into danger, and didn’t want to lead you there too, perhaps he sought toprotect you?’

‘If he thought it was dangerous, any man would have kept a friend at his side,’ Newt scoffed.

Walter shrugged pensively.

Newt shook his head gently, and offered to fetch a fresh loaf.

Outside the roads were icy, and he had to mind his step as his leather-soled boots slipped over the cobbles. The way to thebakers’ shops was easy enough, and he was soon standing in a small stall off Bakers’ Row where the scent of fresh loaves filled the air.

It was only as he walked back that he recalled something else. While they had been walking out from the inn, he had seen someoneat the mouth of an alley — a slim figure in dark clothes. The body itself was all but hidden, but he was sure that the figurehad a gaunt, sallow face.

And he was just as convinced now, as he recalled it, that James had seen him too.

Baldwin woke with a sense of gratification that he had managed to avoid any further contact with the good coroner.

When in trouble, Baldwin had always felt able to trust and rely on the coroner. He had been in some tight situations earlierin the autumn with Simon and Richard de Welles, and de Welles had always been a reliable and honourable friend. However, althoughhis strength and ability in a fight was not in question, Baldwin was perfectly aware that the man was ruinously hazardouswhen it came to drinking with him.

Almost any man alive could drink more than Baldwin. It stemmed from the time when he was a Knight Templar, many years ago. He had early decided that moderation would ensure that he was as effective as possible at performing God’s will and defendingpilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. Abstinence in the heat had left him more capable during weapons training than thosewho had imbibed too strongly the night before.

In the event, of course, there had been no need to worry. He joined the Templars because they took him in, wounded, when hewas at Acre, trying to protect it from the massed hordes who sought to capture it. The siege of the city had marked him forever, and the fact that the Templars had saved him left him with a profound sense of debt. As soon as he could, he had taken the threefold oaths, firm in the resolve that he would fight and lay down his life, if need be,in the reconquest of the Holy Land to save it from the Saracens. It was an ambition that was to be cruelly crushed when the French king and the pope dishonourably perverted justice in order to persecute the Templars out of nothing more than theirown intolerable greed.

His order had been hunted and destroyed, so that their chests of treasure could be raided and plundered. Many of Baldwin’sfriends and companions had been tortured to death, some slaughtered, and all for declaring their innocence. There was no defenceagainst the accusation of heresy. They were not permitted to know the charges raised against them, nor who had levelled them. Instead they were invited to confess, and when they declared that they had no idea what crimes they could have been guiltyof, they were put to the torture.

That gross, obscene injustice had coloured the whole of the rest of his life. It left him with an enduring hatred — of politics,of greed, of unfairness.

There were many who had turned to ritual magic after the destruction of Acre. The fall of the city was a cataclysmic eventfor the whole of Christianity, for if God Himself had so turned His face from His own people, their sins must have been enormous. Some turned to flagellation, others to intense prayer, while a few sought solace in ancient learning. They tried to conjuredemons and bind them to themselves.

It was nothing new. It was rather like alchemy, and Baldwin had the same regard for both. He thought that they were nonsense.

From his early days in the Templars, he had studied when he might, and he had read some of the philosophical tracts written by Thomas Aquinas. He recalled that Aquinas felt that anyattempt to conjure a demon, for whatever purpose, was in effect forming a pact with that demon. It was heretical, and an actof apostasy.

For all that, though, men, and sometimes women, would try to make use of magic to achieve their ends. Since the apparent weaknessof Christianity was exposed by the fall of Acre, perhaps more fools had turned to these supposedly ‘older’ crafts. Baldwinneither knew nor cared. All he was worried about just now was the one man.

It was always possible, after all, that the fellow was less of a fool than he appeared. If he was not actually a dolly-poll,and instead was a shrewd man, he might have pulled the wool over Baldwin’s and Sir Richard’s eyes. It was not impossible. Baldwin was always unwilling to support authority against a churl because of his own experiences, but just because he hadonce had a miserable experience did not mean that all in authority were inevitably corrupt. Some were no doubt as honourableas he.

And even those, like the Sheriff of Devon, who were undoubtedly corrupt in certain spheres of their professional life, mightbe perfectly justified in prosecuting a man like Langatre, who was a self-confessed dabbler in the occult.

‘Rubbish!’ he muttered to himself. There was never any good reason for persecution. Never.